Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Composition and Publication

Composition and Publication

Clarke first developed the idea for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell during a year spent teaching English in Bilbao, Spain: "I had a kind of waking dream ... about a man in 18th century clothes in a place rather like Venice, talking to some English tourists. And I felt strongly that he had some sort of magical background – he'd been dabbling in magic, and something had gone badly wrong." She had also recently reread J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and afterwards was inspired to "trying writing a novel of magic and fantasy".

After she returned from Spain in 1993, Clarke began to think seriously about writing her novel. She signed up for a five-day fantasy and science-fiction writing workshop, co-taught by writers Colin Greenland and Geoff Ryman. The students were expected to prepare a short story before attending, but Clarke only had "bundles" of material for her novel. From this she extracted "The Ladies of Grace Adieu", a story about three women secretly practising magic who are discovered by the famous Jonathan Strange. Greenland was so impressed with the story that, without Clarke's knowledge, he sent an excerpt to his friend, the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman. Gaiman later said, "It was terrifying from my point of view to read this first short story that had so much assurance ... It was like watching someone sit down to play the piano for the first time and she plays a sonata." Gaiman showed the story to his friend, science-fiction writer and editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden. Clarke learned of these events when Hayden called and offered to publish her story in his anthology Starlight 1, which featured pieces by well-regarded science-fiction and fantasy writers. She accepted, and the book won the World Fantasy Award for best anthology in 1997.

Clarke spent the next ten years working on the novel in her spare time, while editing cookbooks full-time for Simon & Schuster in Cambridge. She also published stories in Starlight 2 and Starlight 3; according to the New York Times Magazine, her work was known and appreciated by a small group of fantasy fans and critics on the internet. She was never sure, however, if she would finish her novel or if it would be published. Clarke tried to write for three hours each day, beginning at 5:30 am, but struggled to keep this schedule. Rather than writing the novel from beginning to end, she wrote in fragments and attempted to stitch them together. Clarke, admitting that the project was for herself and not the reader, "clung to this method" "because I felt that if I went back and started at the beginning, would lack depth, and I would just be skimming the surface of what I could do. But if I had known it was going to take me ten years, I would never have begun. I was buoyed up by thinking that I would finish it next year, or the year after next." Clarke and Greenland fell in love while she was writing the novel and moved in together. Greenland did not read the novel until it was published.

Around 2001, Clarke "had begun to despair", and started looking for someone to help her finish and sell the book. Giles Gordon became her agent and sold the unfinished manuscript to Bloomsbury in early 2003, after two publishers rejected it as unmarketable. Bloomsbury were so sure the novel would be a success that they offered Clarke a £1 million advance. They printed 250,000 hardcover copies simultaneously in the United States, Britain, and Germany. Seventeen translations were begun before the first English publication was released. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was first published in the United States on 8 September 2004, in the United Kingdom on 30 September, and in other countries on 4 October.